Biography

George Penruddock’s grant of arms in May 1548 described him as of Penruddock in Cumberland. He and his brother Robert retained property in their native county but made their homes in the south. George Penruddock must have settled in Wiltshire and begun his association with the Earl of Pembroke by 1551, when he held a 21-year lease of the earl’s manor of Broad Chalk. It was to his service with Pembroke that he owed his first seat in Parliament, for on 3 Feb. 1553 the city of Salisbury gave Pembroke the nomination of both its Members. Penruddock was the earl’s standard-bearer by February 1554, when they served together against Wyatt’s rebellion. In the following month Penruddock shared in the distribution of gifts made on the Emperor’s behalf to leading personages at court and their retainers in the hope of gaining support for the proposed Spanish marriage; he received a gold chain and 100 crowns. His admission to Gray’s Inn in 1555 was doubtless honorary.3

Penruddock was with Pembroke at St. Quentin in August 1557 and, as the earl’s standard-bearer, distinguished himself in single combat against a French nobleman. (He is said to have earned the reward of a jewelled chain from Queen Catherine Parr for similar valour on an earlier occasion, presumably in Henry VIII’s last war with France and Scotland, but the circumstances of that exploit are unknown.) His own martial fame, and his master’s ascendancy, sufficed to gain for Penruddock a knighthood of the shire in Mary’s last Parliament. Why he had not sat in any of her previous ones is unclear: it would have been natural for Pembroke to have wanted him in the House. He withdrew from the first session of the Parliament of 1558 a week before it ended, being given leave on 28 Feb., with three Members for Wiltshire boroughs, to attend the assizes in that county.4

Like his master Pembroke, Penruddock remained in favour under Elizabeth until his death on 8 July 1581.5